Audition Monologues for Women

BFA Acting or Musical Theatre Auditions

Note to those auditioning: The Acting/Musical Theatre Division Faculty strongly recommend that you read the play from which the monologue is selected. This will allow you to make informed acting choices. Monologues must be memorized. At your audition you may be given direction by the faculty and asked to make adjustments in your performance. Please dress professionally and wear shoes in which you can move. We encourage you to seek coaching on your monologue and/or songs from your current or past theatre or music teacher or director. Please arrive at least fifteen minutes early for your appointment.

You will be auditioning for a Professional Training Program which is designed for those individuals who wish to pursue a professional career in the theatre. Admission to the Acting and Musical Theatre programs is competitive and the training is rigorous.

Pick only ONE of the below pieces to prepare as your audition (note: these are WOMEN'S monologues; men's are on a separate page).

The Arcata Promise

From Huggy Bear and Other Plays: Huggy Bear, the Arcata Promise, a Superstition by David Mercer

ISBN: 0413383202
Format: Paperback, 142 pp.
Pub. Date: January 1981
Publisher: Methuen Publishing, Ltd.

Laura: I never thought it mattered at all your being so much older. Now I can see it does. Not the years. Not the difference in experience. It's that you'll go on being exactly the same. And I'm changing... I've loved you. I believe you love me. But you've lived and behaved exactly as you wanted – with me like some kind of appendage. Where have I been? Who did anybody ever think I was? Some of your friends still can't even remember my surname! Others pity me. I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever been asked a question about myself. I image people find me dull and boring. You drink. You talk. You dominate. I'm the one who drives you home. You rant. You rave. You're the evening's entertainment. I'm the one you turn on when we get home. I should think I'm despised. Not because anyone's taken the trouble to find out what I'm like. But because I must seem like your bloody shadow. I'm not envious. I admire your acting and respect it as much as anybody else. But I'm not just a servicing arrangement to your needs. I'm something else. And I'm going to find out what it is.

Courting Prometheus

by Charles Forbes

From Ten-Minute Plays From Actors Theatre of Lousiville, Volume 4
Edited by Michael Bigelow Dixon and Liz Engelman
ISBN: 0-573-63367-3
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 1997
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Rita: Happy? Is that what you were going to say? You're full of little words like that aren't you! Yes, there is a fine line between managing my life and being happy with it. I have gotten tangled in it too many times to want to walk with it again. Look, you've obviously gotten lucky – bad choice of words—had good fortune with relationships. I have failed miserably. I don't want to talk about this anymore – just let me work. People think they want me. They say they want me. They stay with me just long enough to convince me that they want me and convince me that I want...need them too. And they leave. I have to think ahead! If I don't think ahead, I'll do it again. I'll think I've found the right one and then…nothing. I'll end up in bed again – crying until I'm too exhausted to cry. There have been weekends that I've fallen asleep in tears only to wake up with the energy to feel those agonies again. No other person goes through this recycled torture. I don't get over things. Hell, I have more in common with Prometheus than I do any man I've dated in my lifetime!

Fame

by Christopher Gore
ISBN: 087129379X
Format: Paperback, 87 pp.
Pub. Date: January 1986
Publisher: Dramatic Publishing Company

Hilary: You see, I was offered this place in the San Francisco Ballet. I haven't told anyone yet, but I'm gonna take it. I don't care what they think. I'm a good dancer. Better than good. Maybe even the best in the school. And that's not conceit, it's just simple honesty. If I stay in New York, everyone will think I bought my way into ABT. And I'm not starving myself for Balanchine's City Ballet. Not that I mind doing the corps de ballet bullshit. I'd sooner do it out of town. I'll pay my dues on the west coast, come back to New York a star. You see, I've always had this crazy dream of dancing all the classical roles before I'm twenty-one. I want Giselles and Coppelias coming out of my feet. And Sleeping Beauties, and the Swan. I want bravos in Stuttgart and Leningrad and Paris. Maybe even a ballet created especially for me. You see? There's no room for a baby.

Lily Dale

by Horton Foote
ISBN: 0822206676
Format: Paperback, 78 pp
Pub. Date: June 1995
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service

Lily Dale: Oh, Brother. Brother! I'm sorry! Oh, dear Brother! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean a word of those terrible things I said. Not a one. I don't know what gets into me. I have a terrible disposition, Brother, a terrible disposition. It's the Robedaux coming out of me. Forgive me, please, please forgive me.

I loved Papa. Believe me, I did. Just as much as you did. I loved him, but it hurts me so to talk about him, Brother. And it scares me, too. You don't know how it scares me. I wake sometimes in the night, and I think can I hear Papa coughing and struggling to breathe like he used to…and I didn't mean that about you leaving, Brother. I'm glad you're hear and I want you to stay until you're all well and strong again. Because you're the only brother I have and sometimes at night, I see you dead and in your coffin and I cry in my dreams like my heart will break. I am really crying because my crying wakes me up and I say to myself, "Brother is alive and not dead at all, that's just a dream," but still I feel so miserable, I just lie there sobbing, like my heart will break. And sometimes Mama hears me and comes in and says, "Why are you crying, Lily Dale?" And I say, "Because I dreamt again that Brother was dead and had gone to heaven and left us."

You're all the family I have, Brother, you and Mama. And we must never leave each other. Promise me you'll never leave me and promise me you'll forgive me. Promise me, promise me…

Street Scene

by Elmer Rice
ISBN: 0573615896
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: January 1929
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Rose: Well, I haven't really had any time to do much thinking. But I really think the best thing I could do, would be to get out of New York. You know, like we were saying, this morning – how things might be different, if you only had a chance to breathe and spread out a little. Only when I said it, I never dreamt it would ever be this way.

I like you so much, Sam. I like you better than anybody I know. It would be so nice to be with you. You're different from anybody I know. But I'm just wondering how it would work out.

There's lots of things to be considered. Suppose something was to happen – well, suppose I was to have a baby, say. That sometimes happens even when you don't want it to. What would we do then? We'd be tied down, then, for life, just like all the other people around here. They all start out loving each other and thinking everything is going to be fine – and before you know it, they found out they haven't got anything and they wish they could do it all over again – only it's too late.

It's what you said just now – about people belonging to each other. I don't think people ought to belong to anybody but themselves.

The Guys

by Anne Nelson
ISBN: 0822219026
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: March 2003
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Joan: "Are you okay?" That was what we all kept asking each other the rest of September. What was the answer? The pebble's dropped in the water. The point of entry is you, yourself. Were you present at ground zero and wounded, suffocated, or covered in white ash? No? I guess you're okay.

The first ring around the pebble: "Is your family okay?" Did you lose someone in the towers or on the planes?

The next ripple – friends. "Are your people okay?"

Next ripple: If someone died in the tower that you had dinner with once and thought was a really nice person, are you okay?

Next: If you look at a flyer of a missing person in the subway and you start to lose it, are you okay?

If all the flyers are gone one day. They're – gone. Are you okay?

Is anyone okay?

That first week I bought a coffee at Starbucks on the way to work, and the guy at the counter handed me my cup and said, "Here's your change. God bless America." And I took a breath and said, "Are your people okay?" And he said, "Only two missing." Only two. And I said…"I hope you can find comfort."